Gotta Get Out
by Pixie Child
Summary: Dawn reflects on the past two years, since Buffy was brought back.


Gotta Get Out AUTHOR: Dark Will (screwin_evil@hotmail.com)  
  
RATING: PG-13 for child abuse and language.  
  
SYNOPSIS: Dawn reflects on the past two years, since Buffy was brought back.  
  
DISCLAIMER: Are you kidding me? I wish I owned them!  
  
MAIN CHARTER: Dawn  
  
PAIRING: None. Well, mentions of Buffy/Spike  
  
FEEDBACK: YES! ALWAYS WANTED AND NEVER NOT READ!  
  
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Warning: Buffy bashing.  
  
It feels like I'm being shot; only I don't die.  
  
I wish I did. It would be a lot less painful then this.  
  
She finally says it this time. She finally admits that I'm not real.  
  
And I don't care because I knew she would eventually say it.  
  
I knew she would eventually say that she died to protect someone who isn't real.  
  
She throws me into a large mirror. The one Xander bought for the potentials to use.  
  
I crash through glass. It shatters. Big friggin' deal.  
  
I shattered a long time ago.  
  
I shattered in The Magic Box that night with Spike.  
  
She didn't care, though. She never did. She still doesn't.  
  
It's all about him.  
  
All about poor, precious Spike.  
  
I used to have respect for him. Hell, I used to look up to him. He taught me everything I needed know. Like how to slay vampires. He taught me because Buffy wouldn't. Because she thought I needed 'protecting'. But he knew I wasn't the child everybody else thinks I am. He treated me like an equal. Not like a newborn baby.  
  
Not like Buffy did.  
  
And now he got himself a soul. For Buffy. So Buffy could love him.  
  
But she can't love. She couldn't even love Joyce. She didn't even cry for her. Sure she cried at the funeral, with everybody else. Because that is what everyone expected of her. But she wasn't crying on the inside.  
  
Everybody cried when we lost Joyce.  
  
Everybody cried when we lost Tara to Warren.  
  
Everybody cried when we lost Willow to dark magicks.  
  
Everybody cried when we lost Buffy.  
  
But nobody cried when I was lost.  
  
Sure, I wasn't gone, physically.  
  
That would have been too much to ask.  
  
I was gone though.  
  
The only difference was that I still sat there.  
  
Pretending to enjoy my life.  
  
Pretending I'm enjoying life while I sit here, wishing I were dead.  
  
Like Tara.  
  
Like Joyce.  
  
Like Buffy was.  
  
Then I could be myself all the time, and not just late at night when Buffy is patrolling and Willow and Tara are boinking so loudly that I wouldn't have been able to sleep even if I was home, tucked in bed like a good little newly made human.  
  
Wait. Not Tara. Tara's dead. That new girl. What's her name?  
  
Katrina? Katie? Carrie? Kennedy. That's it. Kennedy.  
  
The girl who is expected to make all of Willow's pain for Tara go away.  
  
Tara was the only one who cared.  
  
Now, I know I'm suppose to look at the glass half full, but what do you do when you find the glass broken into a million little shards, too tiny to be saved?  
  
A million little shards, covered in your sister's blood.  
  
What do you do when you're left alone and the life you have shouldn't exist because you're not real? And even if you were, you know you should have died that night on the tower. And you're stuck with questions like; 'Why couldn't it had been me instead of her?'  
  
Because you know it should have been you.  
  
But just when you decide that it's time to heal, she comes back from the dead, with more guilt for you to carry around.  
  
And even though she knows that you had nothing to do with her being here, she still yells and screams at you when nobody else is home.  
  
She still beats the crap out of you every night, just to elevate the stress she feels.  
  
But that's okay. Because even though I didn't bring her back, I'm the reason she died in the first place.  
  
And no matter how many times I say it, 'sorry' doesn't make it better.  
  
But she gets that we all regret that she is back.  
  
Willow and the others because they feel bad.  
  
Me because I've learned just how fast a key's bruises and broken bones heal.  
  
And she won't even try healing, because she has me to take it out on.  
  
When she became living again, I died.  
  
No wait, I didn't. I was dead before then.  
  
But I'm the only one who cried.  
  
Because somehow, I _knew_ she would punished me for all that she has been put through.  
  
So for the last two years, Buffy has taught me that I'm the worst thing that ever existed.  
  
For the last two years, Buffy's taught me all the different ways she can inflect pain.  
  
No one sees it. The pain and the hurt.  
  
How I'm treated like crap.  
  
Because they don't want to know that their hero is worse then the vampires and monsters they kill every night.  
  
Because they have an excuse. They don't have a soul.  
  
But she does. Or at least I think she does. The way she's been treating me lately, I'm not so sure anymore.  
  
Not that it matters.  
  
I know I'm the reason for all the pain she feels, but I can't do this anymore.  
  
So I'm running away today, right before the sun goes down.  
  
Before Faith takes the potentials out and I'm left alone with Buffy.  
  
You might say I'm overreacting.  
  
And I would agree with you if I had your life.  
  
But I don't.  
  
All I'm taking with me is the important stuff.  
  
A few sets clothing and every cent to my name.  
  
I rather live alone in a dingy motel room like Faith did for so many years, then live as the sister of the great slayer by day and Buffy's dirty, filthy, unclean punching bag by night.  
  
The only thing I am leaving for them to find is one short message scrawled on a napkin on the table.  
  
'Sick of being black and blue.'  
  
Maybe then they will realize how I feel.  
  
Maybe then they will realize how I felt every night after they would leave me alone with Buffy.  
  
Maybe then they will realize how Buffy would nearly kill me every night.  
  
Maybe then they will realize all the things they should have done.  
  
Maybe then they will realize all the things they should have noticed.  
  
Maybe then they will be nicer to the people around them because one day they might just disappear.  
  
Maybe then they will be nicer to the people around them because one day it might be them who needs to just disappear.  
  
I feel bad for leaving, granted.  
  
Buffy'll probably pick one of the potentials to use in my place.  
  
But I'm beyond the point where I care.  
  
Because I've got to get out of here.  
  
Before I do die physically as well as emotionally.  
  
Bye. 


End file.
